hay all im trying to go vegan and have been a smoker for a while now. ive been looking for a reason to quit (besides all the obvious ones, its not that easy) would quitting help me be a better vegan? ive read people gain their taste buds back after quitting but does anyone have this problem? any help would be great.

quitting smoking does improve your sense of taste as well confer a whole host of other benefits you'll enjoy! the most difficult thing is to quit. I used to smoke too. but if you can stay stopped, it is guaranteed that you will feel so alive and happy after you get past the withdrawal/detoxification period. just be prepared to feel like crap for a few days (and avoid stressful situations as much as you can). try to firm up the time you haven't smoked with physical activity. challenge your lungs a little bit every day so you'll feel less like returning to your old habit.

smoking is progressive inanimacy, a slow death. celebrate life & motion like all the non-smoking creatures do!

I used to smoke, for 18 years off and on (!). I quit 3 years ago and I really can't see myself ever wanting to smoke again. In one day I literally stopped smoking and joined a gym, and decided to eat mega-healthy. It did help that at the time I was looking after a friend's house and dog, in a city where I knew hardly anyone and nowhere to go besides the nearby beach or the gym! So all I did was walk the dog along the beach first thing in the morning, come back and have a light breakfast, go to the gym and work out as much as I could, then come back and have a mega healthy big shake with lots of fresh fruit and soy yoghurt. Then it was dog walk time again etc.I felt more active and healthy than I'd had in a long time. Just to make sure, I lit one cig once, to see how it had affected me. Feeling that poisonous smoke go down my throat into my lungs and tasting the godawful taste of it really made me throw up in disgust - and I've never touched a cigarette since.
If that doesn't help, look at it from an ethical vegan point of view: tobacco is still being tested on animals, so by no means vegan. As if that wasn't enough, it is grown using shedloads of pesticides that kills even more animals, not to mention everything else that's alive in its tracks. The people who grow it, do so for a pittance - no tobacco is grown ethically, there is no "fair trade" tobacco, it all involves slave labour and at great cost to their own health.
And as for your own health; you will know what kind of diseases are related to smoking. Should you end up suffering from one - and I really hope you won't! - you will be subjected to all sorts of treatment and medication that, again, has been tested on animals.
Hope that will give you encouragement to stop smoking. Please do, it's great being a non-smoker!! Let us know how you get on!

smilnnafotograf wrote:hay all im trying to go vegan and have been a smoker for a while now. ive been looking for a reason to quit (besides all the obvious ones, its not that easy) would quitting help me be a better vegan? ive read people gain their taste buds back after quitting but does anyone have this problem? any help would be great.

yes, quitting will help you be a better vegan. if you can suppress the urge to smoke and stick with not smoking. then that will help you maintain and stay vegan.

Cigarettes aren't vegan anyway. And although there are allegedly some vegan tobaccos out there I a) don't trust them, and b) wouldn't name them even if I did, since it would make it harder for you to quit if you had a vegan option!

There are all sorts in cigarettes. Egg products, blood products, gelatine, milk products, insect products. In fact about 200 chemicals find their way into cigarettes besides the ones most people know about.

Add to this the blanket crop spraying, the slave labour, the habitats of animals destroyed just to keep humans addicted, and you will find yourself much more motivated to stop.

Look at it this way, you have already broken social conditioning enough to become vegan. Sure you are strong enough to stop smoking! And you will feel fantastic when you realise how much stronger you feel, and how much better you breathe.

My Granda smoked from when he was about nine to 65. He got heart disease, and stopped, and was astonished to realise what he had been missing all his life. Smells and tastes that had long vanished came back to him, along with his ability to play rings around us grandkids when we played football in the park. The last seven years of his life were fantastic, as he was suddenly able to breathe and expand again, having gradually lost it, without even knowing what he was losing. If a truly life long smoker can give up, I am certain you can, and you don't need to wait to be ill before you do it.

I understand your difficultity re smoking only too well. I was smoking for over 20 years until I gave up in March of this year. I had tried to stop countless times and for a while there I just believed I was one of these people who no matter what just could'nt give up (born 2 smoke!!) Smoking is an addiction and like all addictions once it has taken hold can be hard to shake off. Smoking has been reported to be more addictive than illegal class A drugs like heroin and cocaine. My addiction was so bad that I knew it was going to kill me but felt I was powerless to stop - imagine the mental damage I was doing to myself with the knowledge that I was harming myself so badly but could'nt stop it!. I would go to the gym and be coughing and spluttering after 15 minutes on a treadmill it was embarressing! I would smoke so much that I would bring on a coughing fit so severe that I would throw up all down myself. I caused so much damage to my throat that I would lose my voice at least a couple of times a year. Not to mention the way I smelt and that horrible insecure feeling I'd get when running low on smokes!
I managed to succeed in giving with the help of a book called The Easy Way To Stop Smoking by Alan Carr, it is the best self help book on the subject going, he takes you through the myths of why you smoke one by one (it helps me concentrate, it's a social prop etc etc) and erodes them firmly so by the time you finish the book you no longer want to smoke. Also what helped for me was getting encourgement and help from fellow quitters over the internet, in the past I had always tried to quit alone but it is so much easier with people who you know are experiencing the same difficulties.
Quitting helped me with my veganism, stopping smoking made me aware that if I can pack in a powerful addiction like nicotine then there are no limits to what I can and can't do! Over 4 months quit now I have never felt better, I really belived that life would be too stressful without my beloved cigarettes but the opposite has proven to be the case. I love life without smoking now! Feel fitter,and more confident and take things in my stride a whole lot more!

Hi Mary
I've been vegan for around 2 months, it was quitting the smokes that led me to review other areas of my life . Since becoming vegetarian in Easter 2002 I had been reading up on veganism and thought it was a nice idea but I just wouldn't be able to hack it but as I had previously thought that about smoking i thought why not give it a go and so far so good!! You're right about me feeling a whole lot fitter I noticed that when I'm out on my bicylce I can get up steep hills a whole lot quicker than I used to!

fitness, as it always has, helped me quit. i smoked for 8 years and was able to quit cold turkey. was sick of getting sick and wasting money. it was hard to envision myself not smoking, but now it is just the opposite. get yourself a fitness schedule that includes weights, yoga, walking/running, etc. its a scenario in which you can't just quit one thing and expect your body to just go on as nothing happened. you have to make adjustments all around. good luck mate.
~david

did anyone get the vegan society catalogue with the lighter and read wot they have ou tunderneath??? I quote.... " Lighters - Be a leading light

No need for gelatine based matches you can now stylishly liht up your life, bathroom candles, joss sticks and BBQs with our silvery Diamon jubilee refillable lighter. WARNING Ths lighter is not intended to be used for lighting of cigarettes - which are nasty smelly things, teste on animals and implicated with early death. We want more healthy vegans not less"

I am very very anit-tobacco and drug and to a much lesser extent alcohol (i do drink VERY occasionally) but I am healt fascist!